Religious Fundamentalists Attempted To Sell Daughter Into Arranged Marriage

Jennyfer Austin came forward this week in an interview with the Daily Mail with a tale of the harrowing abuse she suffered at the hands of religious fundamentalists?who attempted to sell her into an arranged marriage for $25,000. Most girls in her situation sell for around $50,000, she said, but she was offered at a discount because the childhood sexual abuse she experienced in a foster home before being adopted made her “damaged goods.”

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Photo via Daily Mail

The story comes one week after Alecia Pennington, another victim of the religious fundamentalist homeschool movement, spoke out about her lack of identity. Her parents either never filed for legal identification papers such as a birth certificate or Social Security card or simply hid these from her. Withholding legal paperwork is a common tactic among abusers of all kinds, since a lack of identifying paperwork keeps victims from being able to begin a life of his or her own.

Jennyfer says that she went to a Christian college, Harding University, never knowing that she was only allowed to go because the man who had purchased her chose for her to go. It was there that she met Tom Austin, with whom she fell in love and planned to marry. Jennyfer went home for a visit and announced her engagement, but says, “I was told I could not marry him because I was already betrothed. I wasn’t aware of this!”

The man who had paid $25,000 for Jennyfer, who was twice her age, confessed that this was true and then broke off the arrangement. When he demanded his money back, Jennyfer’s adoptive mother told Jennyfer she owed him the money. Instead, she fled after searching for and finding her legal documents in a hidden compartment of her mother’s desk. That was almost six years ago in 2009. Jennyfer and Tom Austin are still married.

The story may be shocking, but this is not an isolated incident. The nonprofit Tahirih Justice Center, a legal defense organization focusing on forced marriage cases, conducted a survey that identified more than 3,000 proven and suspected cases of forced marriage in the United States. While some involve immigrant families who have carried the tradition from their own culture, a number of them are girls and women who are raised in the religious fundamentalist homeschool movement.

Those numbers may be far higher considering that victims are so often too fearful to come forward.